No HIIT two days in a row? Is this BS?

[Babylon1023]

I was reading up on HIIT and found this on intervaltraining.net:

Do HIIT every Second Day
An HIIT workout should not be done on consecutive days. The workouts goal is to operate at a high intensity. So when you do your reps, you do them as hard as you can. Working as hard as this produces the benefits of High Intensity Interval Training. The workout burns energy from your muscle systems and it needs time to replenish it. If this doesn?t happen you will not be able to workout with as much intensity and you have much greater chance of injuring yourself. The benefits happen in your body during your rest period and the more rested you are, the more intensity you can put into your workout.


Is this BS or truth? I've never heard that before.

[wolfbaden6]

I used to do it 6 days a week during wrestling season and we'd do it 40 minutes at a time. Sometimes multiple times in the same day!

[in10city]

I was reading up on HIIT and found this on intervaltraining.net:

Do HIIT every Second Day
An HIIT workout should not be done on consecutive days. The workouts goal is to operate at a high intensity. So when you do your reps, you do them as hard as you can. Working as hard as this produces the benefits of High Intensity Interval Training. The workout burns energy from your muscle systems and it needs time to replenish it. If this doesn?t happen you will not be able to workout with as much intensity and you have much greater chance of injuring yourself. The benefits happen in your body during your rest period and the more rested you are, the more intensity you can put into your workout.


Is this BS or truth? I've never heard that before.

It's not BS but it's also not an absolute truth either. Far too many people are binary thinkers or just look at things myopically and don't integrate them into the whole.

The number of consecutive and weekly HIIT sessions that can be handled/tolerated without burning out and running yourself into the ground is highly individual and dependant upon factors like overall training load, session protocols, weight training regiment, tolerance to exercise, recovery abililties, training experience, nutrition, etc...

HIIT when done properly puts a lot of stress on your CNS and musculoskeletal system - especially if a high impact exercise mode is used. You are basically doing leg training every time.

So you have to consider it as part of the whole and find a balance. Listen to your body and gauge your performance abilities or degradation thereof and make appropriate adjustments from there.

[Babylon1023]

I hear ya. The idea for me was to start a morning workout routine that consisted of 20-30min of weight training followed by 20 minutes of HIIT. Was planning on making it a Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday routine unless there was a problem.